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VANCOUVER - Critics of the Kitsilano Coast Guard station’s closure say the time it took for two men to be rescued from the frigid waters of the Strait of Georgia Wednesday morning could have been cut sharply had the station still been operating.

The men dumped in the water when their 19-metre fishboat sank off Point Grey.

According to Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Victoria, it took 21 minutes for the hovercraft to reach the men at 5:38 a.m. But the Coast Guard said later Wednesday that it took just 17 minutes for the hovercraft to reach the men.

Critics of the Kitsilano station closure said it would have taken 10 minutes to reach the men had the Kitsilano station been open.

The two men, who were wearing life jackets but not survival suits, were in the water between 20 and 30 minutes before being rescued.

Experts say that at that amount of time, they were not likely to die.

However, the boaters were still treated for hypothermia and taken to Vancouver General Hospital in stable condition, according to the B.C. Ambulance Service.

A survival chart posted on the American safety website BoatSafe.com says exhaustion and unconsciousness from hypothermia for a person wearing a life-jacket kicks in between 30 and 60 minutes when water is 40-50 F. The ocean temperature Wednesday was 44.6 F, or 7 C.

Death would occur between one and three hours, the site says.

Gordon Giesbrecht, a thermophysiologist and professor at the University of Manitoba, said conditions vary but, “It would probably take half an hour until you become mildly hypothermic with regular clothing. If you haven’t drowned and have flotation (a life-jacket), you could live a few hours.”

The incident comes just days after another boat accident near Jericho Beach, renewing demands to reopen the Kitsilano Coast Guard station.

Union of Canadian Transportation Employees B.C. regional vice-president Dave Clark, whose members work on coast guard vessels, said a 21-minute response time would be double the 10 minutes it would have taken before last month’s Kits base closure.

“A save is a save, but we had quicker response before,” said Clark. “Twenty-one minutes is stretching it and we’re getting into a dangerous time. Sometime, we’re not going to be so lucky.”

According to JRCC, the fishing vessel reported a mayday at about 5:15 a.m.

The crew of a commercial tugboat, the Island Tugger was the first on the scene and spotted the boat sinking and two men in the water. A deep sea clipper ship also responded to the mayday call.

The crew members of the Island Tugger lit the water with search lights and were preparing to rescue the men as the Coast Guard hovercraft arrived.

Federal NDP fisheries critic Fin Donnelly said a zodiac from the Kitsilano station could have arrived in under 10 minutes, as opposed to the more than 20 minutes it took the hovercraft to arrive from Sea Island, despite that station being closer than Kits.

“It is not always about proximity, it’s about the vessel’s ability — the cutter or a zodiac, which take far less time versus the hovercraft. It is the combination of the strategic location plus the vessels,” he said.

“I’m very concerned that we’ll see a life lost and that is unacceptable.”

Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang, who has been outspoken about the Kits station closure, said the situation Wednesday morning could have been much worse.

Later Wednesday, the hovercraft was called out to Point Roberts to investigate a boat fire. Jang said it would have taken the Coast Guard 90 minutes to get back to English Bay, leaving the region to depend on the auxiliary unit. He said volunteers have to be paged, and that can slow down the response time.

Donnelly warned the situation could get a lot worse as the spring and summer approach, and many more recreational vessels join commercial operations in the Strait of Georgia.

Wednesday’s rescue is the second incident on the water in less than a week that would have been attended by rescue crews from the Kits station, which closed last month despite much opposition. The station was considered the busiest in Canada and responded to about 350 calls a year, compared with 250 on Sea Island.

One-third of the calls relate to a life-and-death situation, with most emergencies in the winter months.

On Sunday, a boat ran aground off Jericho Beach with two people on board. A small sailboat also ran aground at English Bay on Saturday, but no one was on board in that incident.

Don Davies, the NDP MP for Vancouver Kingsway, raised Sunday’s accident in the House of Commons on Monday, arguing the incident was a “close call.”

He claims the Sea Island Coast Guard took 31 minutes to attend that call instead of the estimated 11 minutes it would have taken rescue crews from Kits station

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